Parsix 3.0 “Kev” Released and Reviewed

Parsix 3.0 Released
The Parsix Linux distribution is derived from KANOTIX, based on the Debian testing branch, and developed by a team in Iran. The distro comes as a live CD with English and Persian languages installed by default and many others available. According to the release announcement features of the new Parsix 3.0 include GNOME 2.26.3, Linux 2.6.29.6-based Kernel, the installer supports separate /home partition, ext4 file system and GRUB 2, SquashFS+Lzma compression for the live CD and much more. After seeing the amount of changes to this release and remembering positive reviews of Parsix 1.0 and 2.0, I burned the .ISO to CD and got started.

Look and Feel
The default theme of the Parsix 3.0 desktop is very earthy featuring colors of brown and green. The light brown background and panels give the desktop a very clean look which is accented by brighter orange icons on the desktop. The orange icons match the Parsix logo which appears as the head of the menu on the left side of the top panel. The menu remains similar to the standard GNOME look besides the brownish background tone. This is all easily changed by clicking System — Preferences — Appearance where I found Kev-light, Kev-dark, standard Parsix and a few other themes.

It Just Works
Parsix included everything necessary for me to play an MP3 right out of the box. I downloaded it with Iceweasel, double clicked the .mp3, the file was opened and began playing with the Exaile music player. I also found VLC can handle any of my video needs. It’s nice not having to set up codecs, this is very newbie friendly.

Applications
I was happy to see an all-star application lineup which only boosted my confidence of Parsix 3.0. A few that caught my eye included Exaile, GIMP, VLC, Cheese, Brasero, Iceweasel, Pidgin, and OpenOffice. Balsa email client is included instead of Thunderbird, which is my preference at the moment. After looking closer I noticed Icedove, the free/unbranded Thunderbird is easily available through Synaptic Package Manager. In my opinion, having a good selection of applications out of the box is important to help users understand the possibilities of the distro. Sure most applications can be added after installation through Synaptic or even the terminal but this just adds another layer of complication to the users experience.

Conclusion
It was nice to see an excellent set of instantly usable application mixed into the GNOME 2.26.3. The theme matched throughout my experience (log in window, desktop, boot, etc) and I actually began to like these earthy tones quite a bit before I was done. Codecs out of the box are huge for basic desktop users both for ease-of-use and necessity.(Some users can’t install things at first) These things along with the Debian base are enough for me to give Parsix a several week test run on my laptop. Way to go Parsix!